South Korea delivers a spooky recital of a vintage fableBY EMIL TIEDEMANN

When it comes to horror movies we, as Westerners, have pretty much seen it all, so it's only natural for us to look overseas to our Asian cronies to come up with something a little more authentic than another Michael Myers or Jason Voohries. Hollywood has been eyeing nations like Japan and Korea for years now, borrowing their tales of fear and reinventing them for domestic audiences. In fact, one of the latest remakes was this year's
The Uninvited, a story told six years prior in South Korea's most successful horror feature to date,
A Tale of Two Sisters.
Directed and scripted by
Kim Ji-woon,
Two Sisters is not original fiction either, itself based on
Joseon Dynasty's folktale "Janghwa Hongreyon-jon," which roughly translates to "Rose Flower, Red Lotus." It tells of Su-mi (played by
Im Soo Jung), a young woman haunted by the deaths of her mother and younger sister Su-yeon (
Moon Guen Young), which triggers a psychological downward spiral that summits with an abrupt twist that'll catch anyone offguard.

One scene in particular, a two-minute dream sequence set in Su-mi's daylit bedroom, must be amongst the creepiest and most disturbingly buguiling displays in the history of horror movies, evocative of Japan's
Ju-on: The Grudge. It sets a nightmarish atmosphere, despite being cast in the light of day, perfectly stirring up long-forgotten fears that have been dorment since they've become immune to the tactics of American cinema. These unnerving scenes are few and far between, but are well-worth sitting through the two hours of subtitled ingenuity, using thought-provoking terror to entice viewers rather than bloodshedding butchery.
I won't give away the ending of
Two Sisters, or even the character development for that matter, so that you can go into this foreign excursion incognito, expecting nothing but a riveting tale of love lost, blanketed by uneasy oppression. Its Korean-language format may be a distraction at first, but you'll settle in just fine, that is until you find yourself stricken with the jitters from that aforementioned dream episode. Sleep tight!
4/5 stars
2 comments:
Such a good movie!
Yes it was, but I have a feeling that the American remake won't live up to this original!!
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